By RACHEL SALTZ

Published: February 10, 2011

For modern viewers, Aristophanes' ''Lysistrata'' may be easier to admire than to like. The story, of course, compels: Lysistrata leads the Athenian and Spartan women in a sex strike to end the war between their cities. But all that ribaldry and priapism can be tough going. (Hell, perhaps, is other people's bawdy comedy.)

In Theodora Skipitares's production of ''Lysistrata'' at La MaMa, her puppets and masks come to the rescue. They provide distance between audience and play, a veil that offers both discretion and license. The puppets, mostly life-size and elegantly attired, are used for the individual characters. The choruses, male and female, are masked and more grotesque. They sport crude wigs and exaggerated sexual appendages: cloth penises for the gents and, for the ladies, pendulous breasts attached to their tunics.

Ms. Skipitares knows how to put on a show, and the most entertaining parts here involve the choruses, led by the excellent performers Hakim Williams and Raquel Cion. They and their teams -- women on the left, men on the right -- play out a singing, dancing, dirty-talking burlesque-house battle of the sexes.

The talented Sxip Shirey wrote the score and the chorus's catchy, sometimes bluesy songs, which contribute to the production's liveliness and accessibility.

Ms. Skipitares, whose puppet work has included stagings of ''Medea'' and plays about the Trojan War, here adapted, designed and directed. She also includes a contemporary hook. On a screen above two giant puppet heads that act as news anchors, she projects stories of recent sex strikes, in Colombia and Kenya, and other accounts of protests by the powerless. They're interesting -- and certainly relevant to the current moment -- but unnecessary. They interrupt the play while it wrestles with the same points.

Ms. Skipitares's most deft decision may be the assigning of those lead female roles to the puppets. (A few male characters, penises never far out of sight, are puppets too.) After all, Lysistrata & Co. don't want to be playthings of men and the state, or captives of their own libidos. They don't want to be puppets on a string. Ladies, welcome to the struggle.

''Lysistrata'' continues through Sunday at the Ellen Stewart Theater, La MaMa, 66 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 475-7710, lamama.org.nThis is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.